Svatantra: supporting the financial inclusion of Indian women

Svatantra Microfin Private Limited is a Non- Banking Financial company (NBFC) / Microfinance institution (MFI) registered with the reserve Bank of India.  

Svatantra Microfin was set up in 2012, at the initiative of Ananyashree Birla, to empower women in rural India. The company’s objective is to increase the financial inclusion of women and vulnerable people through loans for their businesses. It uses the Joint Liability Group lending model to provide unsecured microfinance loans to groups of 5 to 25 women in rural areas.  

Svatantra operates in 19 states in India through its 692 branches.  

Proparco is supporting Svatantra with USD 15m of financing allocated to the loan portfolio for the development of microenterprises run by women. Proparco will also establish certifications on client protection principles and streamlining the environmental and social (E&S) policy.

The client has received technical assistance through an expert directly recruited by Proparco to strengthen and assess its capabilities on the issue of client protection for an amount equivalent to almost EUR 13,000.

The main expected impacts of the project are: 

• Provide 47,300 women with new or improved access to a microfinance loan.  
• Create 30 jobs at Svatantra and support 23,700 indirect jobs. 
• Contribute to gender equality. Indeed, 100% of the project qualifies under the 2X Challenge by fulfilling the direct criteria “Entrepreneurship”, “Leadership”, “Consumption” and the indirect criteria. 
• Mobilize USD 6m of private finance (ratio of 0.4).  

The project will contribute to the achievement of SDG 1 (“No poverty”), SDG 5 (“Gender equality”) and SDG 8 (“Decent work and economic Growth”).